Study: Workers waste 32 days per year juggling tech, app overload

American workers typically get just two weeks’ vacation per year, but a
jarring number of them are frittering away twice that amount of time.

According to research procured by
RingCentral, 69 percent of workers waste upward of 60 minutes a day “navigating
between apps,” which adds up to 32 days a year. That’s more than six
workweeks’ worth of productivity down the drain, lost in a sea of apps used
for phone calls, texts, email, meetings, video conferences, chat and
collaboration.

Rather than saving time and streamlining internal messaging, the
proliferation of platforms and the overwhelming array of options apparently
are causing communication chaos. Workers are struggling as a result.
RingCentral’s survey found:

More than 70 percent of workers say their communications volume is a
challenge to getting work done.

Sixty-eight percent of workers toggle between apps up to 10 times an
hour, and 31 percent of workers said toggling causes them to lose their
train of thought.

The survey also revealed a rift between workers’ and leaders’ preferred
solutions. Forty-four percent of executives reported being happy with their
company’s “current suite of tools,” though 66 percent of workers said
they’d prefer having a “single communications platform.”

As for consolidating channels and meeting employee preferences, the survey
found:

Employees believe this [consolidating communications] would help them
achieve better workflow (67 percent), be more productive at work (65
percent), make work feel less chaotic (62 percent) and make it easier to
work remotely (61 percent).